JANUARY 2018

January 6 and 13

Lawrence Welsh

Writing and Riding The Border:

Poems From Your Spinning Wheels

Born and reared in South Central Los Angeles and a first generation Irish American and award-winning journalist, Welsh has published nine books of poetry, including Begging for Vultures: New and Selected Poems, 1994-2009 (University of New Mexico Press). Now in a second printing, this collection won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. It was also named a Notable Book by Southwest Books of the Year and a finalist for both the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award. Welsh is a winner of the Bardsong Press Celtic Voice Writing Award in Poetry and the 2017 Pen World magazine Montegrappa essay competition. Currently, he is an English professor at El Paso Community College. He’s also lectured, read and taught at a wide range of universities and institutions, including UCLA, New Mexico State University, the University of Texas at El Paso, the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Murray State University. His journalism awards include the Society of Professional Journalists Bill Farr Reporting Award, the Copley Los Angeles Newspapers Award, The Jessie Steensma Endowment Scholarship, and the Women in Communications Endowment Award. In 2011, Irish America magazine in New York City named him one of the “Top 100 Irish Americans” of the year. In 1987, he received The Society of Professional Journalists/Sigma Delta Chi Outstanding Graduating Journalist Award from California State University, Long Beach. In 1979, he co-founded The Alcoholics, the L.A. punk rock band. As part of its Punk Archive Series, Sahlugg records of Los Angeles in 2017 released East of Sepulveda: 1979-1982, a retrospective of the band’s studio and live cuts. Lawrence Welsh’s poetry, fiction, reviews, essays, as well as journalistic writings, have appeared in more than 200 national and regional magazines, journals, newspapers and anthologies, including Puerto del Sol, Hawaii Review, The Louisiana Review, Rio Grande Review, The Texas Observer, The Santa Fe New Mexican, The Irish Echo, Irish America, New Madrid Review, The Wormwood Review, Onthebus, Pearl, Poetry Now, Big Bridge, The Café Review, Nexus, Chiron Review, Poetry Motel, Main Street Rag, The Raven Chronicles, The Powhatan Review, Pitchfork and The Los Angeles Daily Breeze, the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper where he spent five years as a reporter and staff writer in the 1980s.

Jan 20

Barbara Buck

Our Walt Disney World

Barbara Buck grew up on nuclear bomber bases never living in one place but a year or two, always transferring schools in the middle of semesters. As a junior, she was selected to enter Harvard where she was ultimately awarded a Ph.D. in English. Her field of specialization was expatriate American writers. She has taught at Harvard and other colleges, and consulted with the State of Texas on failing schools and the introduction of computers into the classroom. Her awards include two from presidents, five from governors, and several from foundations. In 2011 she taught her last two graduate seminars at Berkley and Stanford. Barbara has published poetry and short fiction in various small magazines. When living in the El Paso area, Barbara has attended Tumblewords since it met up the Mesilla Valley in a farmworker community center and Donna wore red boots.

Jan 27

Tafari Nugent

Micro Fiction-The Shortest Story

Tafari Nugent was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received his first writing prize in elementary school, the Ezra Jack Keats award. He attained a M.F.A. at the University of Texas at El Paso. In both poetry and short fiction, the crux of Nugent’s work, he focusses on the complex idea of narrative construction while attempting to develop writing which gives voice to particular subjects through the focalization of marginalized characters in the context of current events in the early 21^st Century. Nugent was an editor on the Rio Grande Review. He has been published in Chrysalis and the Rio Grande Review.

OCTOBER 2017

Oct 7 Sandra Torrez Paranoiac-Critical Method

Sandra Torrez is a poet, fiction writer and digital photographer. She writes regularly with the Tumblewords Project, and has also been featured in readings and as a workshop provider. She proudly supports local art exhibits, cultural events and poetry readings. Sandra received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso and has served in the United States AmeriCorps. Her poetry and digital art have been published in such e-zines as Return to Mago and I Am Not A Silent Poet and anthologized in Mezcla and She Rises. You can find more of her art and poetry on her website, My Creative Life . Sandra’s workshop will feature artwork by Salvador Dali and a brief description of his life and work. Come, take my hand and let us enter a dreamworld together.

Oct 14 Ann Birch No Things but in Ideas: Writing that Dares to Think

Ann Birch is a librarian, amateur actor, and writer. Her work has been published about 35 times, often in little magazines that are about to put out their last issues and disappear. She is an essayist who wishes she could write fiction, but has been working on poetry instead. Originally a Pennsylvanian, Ann first came to El Paso as an Army wife in the 1960's, where she finished a Master’s degree in English from George Washington University, taught English and German briefly at Ysleta High, and commuted to the University of Pittsburgh for a Master's in library and information science. Each year since 2004 she has acted in plays in local theater. Short stories have appeared in little magazines like Kansas Quarterly, Antietam Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, and New Frontiers of New Mexico. Her poems have been included in Mezcla, Sin Fronteras, BorderSenses, and Voces Fronterizas.

Oct 21 Annette Velásquez All About Animals

Annette Velásquez has three books, From Inside the Whirlwind - A Poetic Memoir, Freedom's Quest. and Runner's Blues. Her work has also appeared in Chrysalis, Matrix, Sentences and The Blacksburg Free Press, among other publications. She has a forthcoming trilogy, Daughter of Diasporas, due out this summer. She was born in Urbana, Illinois, the daughter of Hungarian refugees. Annette served a brief stint in the United States Marine Corps and was honorably discharged. She lives in El Paso with her husband and advocates for the rights of homeless and disabled people, immigrants, and veterans. Workshop participants will look at poetry about animals, in the wild, in and around the home, and as symbols and metaphors. Annette will be referring to poetry by Jane Kenyon, Stanley Kunitz, Joy Harjo, Mary Oliver and Marianne Moore.

October 28 Raquel Mejía On My Altar Place

Each year around November 2, Raquel presents a special workshop focused on old and new myths and traditions associated with Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. Raquel’s work has appeared in Mezcla and Calaveras Fronterizas, both published by Mouthfeel Press and in Taller Literario Pablo Ochoa: XXV Aniversario, published by ICHICULT. She participates frequently with the Tumblewords Project and is a founding member of Rincon Bohémio for bilingual writers. Raquel is one of forty-eight international women poets included in 2009-2010 in the Huajuquilla, Chihuahua Reporter’s RANCHO LAS VOCES an art and cultural journal.

SEPTEMBER 2017

Sept 2 N O W O R K S H O P

Sept 9 Felípe de Ortego y Gasca The Suprasegmental of Narrative

A major public intellectual, Dr. Felípe de Ortego y Gasca is currently Scholar in Residence at Western New Mexico University, teaching Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Public Policy. He studied at Pitt, the University of Texas, and the University of New Mexico where he earned the Ph.D. in English, specializing in British Renaissance Literature. He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and Stanford. In 1969, Dr. Ortego taught the first course in Chicano literature in the United States at the University of New Mexico. Considered the principal scholar of the Chicano Renaissance, Ortego is the founder of Chicano literary history having written the first study in the field, Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature, in 1971.

Dr. Ortego has appeared in a major motion picture, written plays, and was the fifth Mexican American in the United States to hold a Ph.D. in English. His articles, essays, fiction, and poetry appear in national and international publications, including The Nation, Saturday Review, The Center Magazine, The American Scholar, Chaucer Review, Connecticut Review, University Review, New England Review, Denver Quarterly, Studies in Linguistics, Southwestern American Literature, Journal of Reading Behavior, Social Casework, Borderlands Journal, Journal of Ethnic Studies, The Reading Teacher, Barat Review, CLA Journal, Choice, Aztlan, Journal of South Texas. He has appeared in a major motion picture, written plays and was the fifth Mexican American in the United States to hold a Ph.D. in English. A long-time supporter, this will be Dr. Ortego’s fourth Tumblewords Project workshop.

Sept 16 Yvonne Collins Dear Younger Me

Yvonne Collins is a writer and visual artist who works with grease pencil, water color, and crayon. One of her pencil pieces hangs in the ancestral home of a family in Milan, Italy. Her art, poetry and short stories have appeared in various issues of Chrysalis, Mezcla, and Border Tapestry, and she has published a book review in the El Paso Times. She has twice won second place in Fiction and published in Border Tapestry, the annual anthology of the El Paso Writer’s League. While serving on the El Paso Arts Resources Department board, she helped to initiate Music under the Stars. With two others, she worked to produce the El Paso International Western Film Society, serving on its Board of Directors. Collins has been a continuous participant in Tumblewords Project since August of 2009. This will be her eleventh workshop presentation for Tumblewords Project.

Sept 23 Sheela Wolford Autumn Beginnings

This workshop will delve into the areas of our lives where we have sacrificed our happiness for someone else; lost identity or gone into the fogginess of indecision. It will also explore the feelings of breaking free! Sheela is working on a group of essays about her relationship with her mother. She is also secretly writing a novel. Knock when you come to her closet. The password is Tumblewords saved Sheela.

Sept 30 Donna Snyder 100 Thousand Poets for Change

Poets, musicians, and artists around the world will stage events to take place simultaneously on September 30th in the sixth annual celebration of poetry, art and music to promote social, environmental, and political change. Tumblewords Project will again participate with the global poetry event, as we have since the first in 2011. This year, Donna Snyder will lead our workshop addressing the power of poets to effect change in the world. Snyder founded the Tumblewords Project weekly writing workshops in 1995. She has collections of poetry published by Virgogray Press, Chimbarazu Press, and NeoPoiesis Press.